Lecture by Dr.med Walter Schimdt (pictured), held at the Congress
Day in Lindau, Germany, March 2nd 1996

Ladies and gentlemen,

It's getting more and more difficult to find your way through the forest
of abbreviations, no matter whether they are related to technical or medical
problems.

For a long time, such an abbreviation has been worrying all meat-consumers:
BSE. This stands for:

BovineSpongiformeEncephalopathy

I'm speaking of the so-called mad-cow-disease, known since 1981.

It's a disease, which first strikes the central nervous system of cattle,
perforates and spongily soaks their brains.

Particularly tragic is the long incubation period. This is the period
between being infected with a disease and the appearance of the first
symptoms. For the mad-cow-disease it takes 2-8 years, in extreme cases
even 25 years.

The behaviour of the stricken cattle changes between aggression and
apathy, thus dullness. A complete loss of the capability of orientation
leads to a giddy walk followed by falls with fractures of legs and ribs.
Add to this, trembling of the muscles in the areas of neck, shoulder and
flanks, paralysis and convulsions of face-nerves.

The main problem is whether this disease is infectious to man.

We're used to the fact, that of national side all the dangers which
could lead to serious demands intervention are played down. Here too all
truthful information has been and still is stopped as in cases of fallout
(without knowledge of the range of damage they say that there would be
no danger to the population), and an eventual transfer of this lethal
disease to man is denied.

BSE started in Britain. According to British Law every affected animal
has to be bought by the government and has immediately to be disposed
of. Typically again, that disposed of is being identically applied to
tins, beer-bottles and thus simply rubbish, but also to the bodies of
animals, which fell victims to unbelievable suffering, caused by man.

The British Government see demands for billions of pounds come up to
them, caused by huge numbers of dying animals due to BSE. Thus, they'd
like to give an all-clear signal as quickly as possible and in doing so,
they dont shrink from punishable acts.

British BSE-expert Dr.Narang developed a rapid method, which reliably
gives information about the early existence of BSE. One might think that
this scientifically valuable discovery would win the ear of the British
Health Authorities. Far from it: They started a sudden boycott, Dr.Narang
was fired for threadbare reasons, got anonymous death-threats, all his
BSE-files were stolen, the brakes of his car were sabotaged and also the
tyres were slashed.

Another tragic parallel is the fate of a Belgian veterinary surgeon,
Karl van Noppen, who challenged, in spite of all threats, a hormone-misuse
which for man and animal is unhealthy but actually on the increase. He
was stopped on a way to his consulting room and shot in cold blood. His
corpse was thrown into a ditch.

I'd like to go into details of the so-called hormone-misuse: Medicine
residues no matter what sort may transfer from animal to man by blood-circulation.
So-called motorway-veterinarians illegally deliver to stock-farmers of
large agricultural enterprises illegally hormones and other medicine,
which contrast the effect upon animals to the possible defects of health
on man.

Psychiatric drugs are used, which lower the animals urge to move, cause
trouble in responsiveness and changes in the blood.

Beta-blockers are used to stabilise blood circulation of pigs before
mass transportation. For people who suffer from bronchial asthma, this
may lead to life-threatening conditions. So-called gluco-corticoides,
the most famous of which is cortisone, swell animal-bodies and increase
weight. They may activate mans gastric ulcers and weaken the immune-system.
Oestrogens, these are sex hormones, lead to quicker growth, but favour
mans allergies and blood-vessel-defects.

Particularly momentous may be the unmeasured administration of antibiotics,
which is supposed to prevent infectious diseases. For man, an accumulation
of different antibiotic-residues may lead to resistance and thus in serious
cases like pneumonia and blood-poisoning makes the required antibiotics
worthless or forces the usege of stronger medicine with therefore more
and more delicate side-effects.

Without the black market, which is estimated at maybe twice as much,
there was medicine injected for 695 millions of DM into bodies of fattened
animals in 1994.

The cause of BSE lies probably in feeding cattle with animal meal from
dead sheep.

Since the outbreak of this disease, 160.000 animals have suffered a
terrible death. They guess that there are already 500.000 new cases of
infection.

For 250 years, the BSE-similar Traber-disease has been known in sheep;
named after the staggering walk, the Scrapy. The germs of this disease
have been rendered harmless by heating them to 360°C, before using
the meat for animal meal. But within the scope of austerity measures,
the temperature was decreased to below 138°C with the result that
the germs of Scrapy survived and braved any defensive reaction of the
immune-system.

In spite of that, it was used as concentrated feed for all kinds of
fattened animals, likewise in zoological gardens and big fur-farms. Many
of those animals whose pelts were used, were miserably going to ruin because
of BSE.

A way of communicating itself to animals on free hunting-ground would
have disastrous consequences, espescially with a view to the long incubation
period. Striking is the assertion in the latest veterinarian reports on
BSE, that an early diagnosis of the infection was not possible up to now.
The work and events concerning Dr. Narang, who provided this possibility,
are not mentioned anywhere.

In Britain the meat of slaughtered animals then has directly as well
as indirectly (via Holland, Portugal, Spain, France and Italy to Germany)
been imported as it was made public in a TV-show on 26th January 1996
so that in the end, nobody actually knows, where his meat is really from.

Here too, the reaction of the meat-industry wasn't wanting. CMA another
unknown abbreviation means: Central Marketing Association of the German
Agricultural Business. They went onto the attack and maintained daringly,
it's all simple scaring to rattle the customers. If you ensure when shopping
that your meat is really from Germany, you dont run any risk.

But whether a shop-assistant is really able to tell you the origin of
meat or whether she would tell you the truth is questionable. Or did you
ever receive another answer than certainly when asking whether the goods
you were just buying were really fresh or not?

Ms. Margrit Herbst, veterinary surgeon in Schleswig-Holstein, lost her
position, because she refused to make out false papers. Thus, not those
are being punished who commit forgery, but those who dont for the protection
of peoples' health and on behalf of the truth.

Our authorities refer to the ordered routine in slaughter-houses; this
is a brief inspection of those animals which have been driven to the death-boxes.

The argument that animals would be killed when behaving conspicuously
can't be taken seriously, because serious symptoms dont arise during
the long incubation period, but not yet after the out-break of the disease.

And what about animals which have left the degrading, agonising animal-transportations
behind?

We know the sleep-depriving film-scenes by Mr. Manfred Karremann, how
the exhausted creatures are beaten off the ramp. How can those slaughtermen
judge whether the staggering and tumbling of those creatures is due to
their electro-shocks or because of BSE?

It's not certain yet, whether the germs are so-called prions (which
have changed protein-structures from animal to animal), unknown and infectious
protein-structures, like viruses and bacteria.

Holes in the skulls of animals result from bolt-shots in the slaughter-houses.
Butchers pick through them with instruments to destroy the spinal cord,
whereby they open to germs (in the case of a BSE-infection) ways to blood-vessels.
Here, another source of danger arises for man, in the field of cosmetics,
you know. Cattle-tallow from offal as a basis for ointment of possibly
infected sheep in lip-stick, soap and be ruled out, but even small wounds
and cuts, especially of mucous membranes, conceal the small risk similar
to protein-extraction from tissue of animals afterbirths in production
of medicine.

It is just as hard to exclude the dangers of infectiousness of BSE on
man as it is to judge whether there be a connection between BSE and C.J.D.

This abbreviation means Creutzfeld-Jakob-Disease. The absolute similarity
of the symptoms and the same development of this likewise spreading disease
are striking. That's why it's already reputed to be the human equivalent
of the mad-cow-disease.

For the first time it's been described by Hans-Gerhard Creutzfeld, neurologist
in Kiel and Alfons Jakob, neurologist in Hamburg. Since 1975 it's also
been called spongious enzephalopathy.

The similarity of most of the symptoms to some other diseases makes
differential-diagnosis more difficult, uncoordinated movements of multiple
sclerosis, amnesia and loss of orientation of Alzheimer or trembling of
muscles and paralysis of the nerves of Parkinsons Disease.

You can see how little information there is on Creutzfeld-Jakob is,
if you open the volouminous textbook on neurological diseases by Thomas
Brand (1993), where you'll only find patchwork-like information. It's
proven that this lethal disease caused death for 14 people, who were vaccinated
with a substance made of blood-serum from sheep. In Germany butchers and
children died, after treatment with growth-hormones (30 in France and
10 in the USA).

In spite of this, the USA delivered a limited ultimatum to the EU to
raise the import ban for beef to escape from difficult sanctions.

Minister Seehofer (Germany) answered the question of a TV-reporter,
whether he would nevertheless stick to the import ban or not: As usual
well have to find compromise solutions.

What such compromises will look like in the end when it comes down to
public health is easily imagined.

More and more scientists tend to think that a connection between BSE
and Creutzfeldt-Jakob can be taken as fact, especially since the latest
number of infected people shows an alarming rise and is twice as high
as in 1985.

In 1995, 55 people died of this incurable brain-syndrome, among them
farmers who had direct contact with BSE-infected cattle. This was concealed
by the government, but it came to public notice by chance: a fax of the
investigating committee landed in a newspapers office (The Daily Mail)
instead of the Public Health Ministry.

Of course, for this disease, too, no end of animal testing has been
carried out, transferring humane spongiforme brain-material to

The only thing resulting from it was some sort of statistics, that all the
named species had completely different incubation-periods, but the same
strong symptoms and that they all died very painfully after 1-7 years. A
histological examination of the brain substance proved in all cases spongiforme
enzephalopathy.

To test the other way round, to see whether the disease can be really
transferred from animal to man, is not feasible for obvious reasons.

Thats why in spite of innumerable animal tests the main question is
still unsettled, the one of transferring the disease to man.

By means of the identity of the histological results of brain-sections
of people and animals, most scientists feel confirmed in supposing a direct
connection and a transfer possibility between BSE and CJD.

Every single person has to decide now on their own, whether to expose
themselves and their children to these risks or not. Already today, experts,
who dont let themselves be browbeaten, say that BSE and CJD are essentially
more dangerous than AIDS, because you can protect yourself against it,
but you cannot against the germs, which are able to attack all animal
food.

It's high time that people who think they couldn't live without meat,
reflected upon their eating habits in their own interest. This is not
only due to the fear of BSE or CJS, but for two further reasons:

First because the consumption of meat leaves remains of the already
mentioned, irresponsible hormone treatment in human bodies, second because
the consumption of meat is basically responsible for the shocking rise
in heart disease.

Let alone the ethical-moral aspects of the mass breeding of animals,
which causes starvation in the 3rd world, since the EU only imports 50
millions of tons of rice, corn, soya and other food each year from India,
Argentina, Brazil and even from countries of the Sahel-zone which are
permanently threatened by famine.

Thus, animals in our wealthy part of the world are fed with the food
of the poor and the poorest for the sake of our consumers, to provide
them with meat stuffed with medicine, so that they can eat until they
get ill.

Over 80 per cent of world corn is used as fodder. There wouldn't have
to be famine, thinking of this quantity.

In addition to these dangers due to wrong food, there are disastrous
chemicals in our food of which Prof. Türkauf (Uni Basel) says that
they didn't exist 2-3 decades ago, not even in cupboards with toxic material
in them. And toxicologist Prof. Zbinden (Uni Zürich) adds, that there
no dose of a foreign chemical substance in our body exists without effect.

Economic interests, which are superior to consumer protection not only
in terms of the mad-cow-disease and CJD, of the eurocrats in Brussels
can make afraid, because they give you more and more the impression that
they play their irresponsible games and that they are willing to sacrifice
public health for it.

Another Meat Scandal in Switzerland

Shock and disgust were the most used expressions when journalists discovered
that not only animal-derived feed but also human placentas have been fed
for about 20 years to ruminants. When the disgusting facts were iscovered,
there could be found no one responsible for the fact that 2 big birth clinics
in Zurich had sent all their several thousand human placentas yearly to
a factory for the production of bone-meal and meat by-products. There was
a serious reaction amoung the public and probably some more people became
vegetarians.

Some decades ago there was another purpose for human placentas: After
the birth of a healthy child the father buried the placenta in the garden
and nearby or on it was planted a tree as a symbol for the childs life,
for it was known that placentas were very nutritious.